7 hours to kill in France. Help!

We are leaving our gîte at 10am ish in Adriers (Vienne) and are catching our overnight ferry from Caen - probably arrive at 10pm. It's about 5 hours to get there with traffic, and we have lots of time to kill.

Any ideas on what we can do?

Sorry - not quite a camping question, but I am aware of lots of knowledgable people on this board, especially with regards to France.

We made a detour to Mont St Michel on our way to our campsite last month, you could easily kill a few hours there. Churches are not really our thing, and we didn't actually go in, but the wee streets are lovely and there's loads of shops for last minute purchases. The restaurants and cafes are pretty expensive though! Even our DDs (7 and 4) enjoyed it and there is a fabulous free bus service taking you to it from the car park.

I should have said that our car will be packed to the roof and our bike rack with all 4 bikes strapped on. How safe will it be to leave this unattended since DH's bike is worth a fortune cos he's bike mad?

I could do with a little last minute retail to sort out relatives gifts.

There's a museum dedicated tithe Canadian d-day soldiers at Juno beach which is good. You could easily drive some of the d-day stuff and never be too far from the bike. The bayeux tapestry isn't too far away but parking will be more town-y

Here is my experience of three hours there this summer with dh, and 2 DC aged 9 and 7...

We went with a fully laden car to Omaha beach. There is a museum just before the beach, which was ok but expensive for what it was. By the beach itself there is a restaurant in a house (on your left). Boy that was expensive! We left there, having passed on the scary restaurant, and headed to the American cemetery which is massive,dignified and very American. It also has a huuuuge car park. There was another museum there which looked better, but we didn't go in. A bit further along the coast is Arramanches with its mulberry harbours. That's a tiny but very pretty town. We went from there to Bayeux due to an urgent need to feed the kids (it was now 4pm and they hadn't eaten since 9.30 .... It was getting tense!). There is a massive Leclerc supermarket in Bayeux where we had a surprisingly good snack (crepes/croques .... But dire coffee) and change out of 10E for the four of us. We then passed Caen en route to Le Havre, where we were staying. Around the countryside there are lots of cognac tasting farms etc advertised which might also be of interest.

I would really recommend the beaches ... It is so hard when you see the blue sea and kids playing on the beach to imagine what happened in1944.